


What Happens In Amsterdam

by takhallus



Category: One Direction (Band), Radio 1 RPF
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Tattoos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-29
Updated: 2015-01-29
Packaged: 2018-03-09 15:24:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3254762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/takhallus/pseuds/takhallus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Louis comes back from tour with an itchy crotch and Nick fears the worst.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Happens In Amsterdam

It’s funny having a boyfriend, Nick thinks as he attempts to tidy up the bedroom before Louis gets back. It’s funny having someone who like, has to put up with you because they kind of made a deal with you to do that. It’s especially weird, Nick muses further, that his boyfriend is Louis Tomlinson, and that no-one really thinks his boyfriend even likes him, never mind kind of almost-although-he’s-not-said-it-yet maybe loves him? Nick’s already dropped the L-bomb, way too soon but what did anyone really expect. He’d been drinking. Obviously. Louis was having a night in at Nick’s, playing with Pig, watching Alan Partridge on Netflix and eating pizza, waiting for his boozy lad to come back and snuggle. Except when Nick came back he was so drunk he only managed to make it to the bed and fall fast asleep on his face. He momentarily woke up when Louis came to bed, just long enough to attempt his ‘sexy face’ and tell Louis “I love you Louis annam no jussayin tha be cossov ad a drink.” He doesn’t remember this of course but Louis filmed it on his phone and played it back to him ad nauseum for the next six months, so…

Anyway, the point is, it’s still funny sometimes, still weird. Nick still hasn’t quite gotten over the idea that Louis isn’t in this for the long haul, that’s Nick is just a boy-shaped blip before Louis settles down with some pretty girl next door type and starts breeding his football team. He’s never told Louis this, but everytime they meet he thinks it might be the last time, the time when they have ‘a talk’. After nine months he still feels like that, every time. 

Nine months in pop star world isn’t even that long. For five of those months Louis was on tour, so really it’s more like four. And then sometimes they didn’t see each other for two weeks even when Louis was back in London. Even now he’s waiting for Louis to get back from a mini promo tour in Europe. He’s been gone a week and Nick misses him like crazy. 

Just as Nick is half-heartedly plumping one of the cushions on the bed he hears the key in the door and rushes out to meet Louis, with Pig close on his heels. He wasn’t planning to play it cool or anything, which is good because he nearly bowls Louis completely over trying to hug him.

“Whoah, alright! I’ve missed you too I suppose, let me get in the bloody door at least.” He hastily pecks Nick on the cheek and starts taking off layers, picking Pig up for a cuddle as he goes. 

Nick follows, chatting shit, asking him a billion questions and getting one word answers back, which is nothing new. The next thing Louis is in the bedroom and he’s closed the door, which he never does. It’s worrying. Nick hovers outside then decides to give Louis a bit of space and yells that he’s taking Pig for her night time walk. On the way round the block he comes up with about a hundred different ways that Louis might tell him its over when he gets back in, then tells himself off for being stupid, then he nearly has a bit of a cry, then finally he gets back to his flat and steels himself for what might be a horrible night.

He feeds Pig and strokes her head before taking his shoes off so he can creep better. He opens the door to the bedroom as quietly as he can and peeps round the door as if he’s not meant to be there. Louis is tucked up in bed already, his back to Nick’s side. Nick quietly gets undressed and has to walk past Louis to go to the bathroom. On the way back out he glances down and Louis’ eyes are closed, which is a bit of a pain. Nick knows Louis must be tired but he’s missed him and he wants a cuddle. He climbs into bed on his side and puts his arm over Louis gently, grinning when Lou rolls over and curls into him. “Sleepy Nick, I’ve had a long day and shit.”

Nick hums and strokes Louis’ back just as his boyfriend rolls over. What happens next all goes too fast for Nick’s brain. Louis is on his back, Nick’s hand remains where it is and Louis rolls so that his cock is under Nick’s hand. Then he yelps. Louis yelps. And leaps out of bed and locks himself in the bathroom. 

Nick takes a minute to feel sorry for himself because his boyfriend doesn’t love him back and actually squeals in pain when he touches his penis. Then he calls out to Louis to see if he’s alright. 

Louis sheepishly comes out of the bathroom and sits back in bed , knees pulled up to his chest. “I need to to tell you something….”

Nick breathes in hard through his nose, trying not to be sick. “Okay.”

Louis won’t look at him. “I er...when I was in Amsterdam...I did something a bit stupid and now I can’t stop itching down there. I can’t stand for anyone to touch it, sorry.”

Nick never knew the difference between feeling sick and feeling nauseous before but he knows now. When you feel sick you think you’re going to be sick, but when you’re nauseous you feel like everything you’ve even been scared of has gathered in your stomach to hurt you as it burns its way through your oesophagus and emerges violently from your mouth. He manages to blurt out a sentence. “You didn’t use a condom?” Ha! That’s what you come up with Nick, really? Not ‘you’ve broken my heart’, not ‘you’ve betrayed me, you pixie-faced fuck’ but you’re asking why he didn’t use a condom!?

He looks up at Louis, who seems completely baffled. “What? What are you on about?”  
The tears that have been hanging around, threatening to come for a long time, are now flowing unbidden down Nick’s face. Louis hugs him, but still winces as he half crawls into Nick’s lap. “You idiot, you think I’ve got the clap? Is that what you think?”

Nick tries to say “Well what am I supposed to think when you come back from Amsterdam with an itchy knob saying you’ve done something stupid?” but it comes out a bit wet and sobby and garbled.

Louis shakes his head and kneels up on the bed, pulling down his pyjama bottoms. “Look!”

Nick swipes his hand across his eyes and looks at Louis’ crotch. It’s a bit red and bumpy around the top left hand side but it’s really more his...inner thigh. And now he realises. “”Oh”. 

It’s a tattoo. A little scrawly heart which Nick recognises but can’t place. It’s dotting the ‘i’ of the word ‘grimmy’, in italics, lower case. It’s his name, tattoo’d on Louis’ inner thigh, where only Nick would see it.

“At first I was just going to get the heart, it’s the heart you always put on your notes.”

Nick leaves notes in Louis’s bag before he goes away, hidden in a shoe or a forgotten pocket. They say daft things like ‘Love you quite a lot’ and he ends them with a little quickly drawn heart, like the one he does when he signs an autograph. Louis has literally never mentioned the notes before, Nick was beginning to think he’d never found them.

“But then it looked a bit wrong all on its own, so I said, fuck it, put ‘grimmy’. They had to shave it to do the tattoo and now the stubble’s coming back in and it’s so fucking painful Nick, I thought I was gonna pass out when you touched me before.”

Nick catches a glimpse of them both in the mirror and they look quite ridiculous, Nick up close and personal with Louis’ dick but with a confused look on his face like he’d never seen one before. He turns over and grabs the E45 cream out of his drawer. “Come here, this will help” he says as he ever, ever so gently paints it on with his fingers, covering the red bits while Louis hisses through his teeth. He pulls Lou’s pyjama bottoms up slowly and gets up on his knees to bring their lips together. It’s probably the nicest kiss they’ve ever had.

“I can’t believe you got my name tattoo’d on you before you’ve even said if you love me or not, I mean, I love the tattoo, but that’s not the natural order of things is it?”

“What are you on about?” Louis says between kisses, “I have told you I love you, I told you ages ago.” 

“You never!” 

“I fucking did, knobhead, I play it to you enough. You don’t fucking listen do you?” Louis pulls away and grabs his phone, swiping furiously. “I knew you weren’t listening, I was waiting for you to accuse me of not saying it back, I can read you like a book. A children’s book, a fucking bath book.” He holds the phone up and it’s the video of Nick drunkenly declaring his love. “Now listen!”

Nick watches and listens, he’s seen this a billion times before. He’s on his side in bed, hair everywhere, eyes half shut, rambling that he loves Louis. He’s about to interrupt and tell Lou that he’s seen this when he realises the video is longer than he thought. Usually at this point he’s cringing with his head in his hands so that might explain why he’s never seen the last few seconds, when very quietly, Louis laughs and says “I love you too, you drunken idiot. Oh for fuck’s sake, he’s just fallen asleep. Dickhead.”

Nick doesn’t know what to say so he has a rare moment of silence. Louis just smiles and shakes his head, pulling him down into bed and pulling the covers over them, turning off the bedside lamp to leave them in darkness. They cuddle sweetly for a few minutes, Nick opening his mouth to speak a few times but not forming words. Eventually he just says “Say it again, Lou.”

“I love you dickhead.”

Nick grins and squeezes him, careful not to touch anything red and bumpy. “I love you too.”

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by Grimmy's quote on the Breakfast Show that a tattoo of his name in lower case italics would be 'cool'


End file.
